being and nothingness.docx

Being and NothingnessFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia(Redirected from Being for itself)Being and NothingnessCover of the first editionAuthor Jean-Paul SartreOriginal title L'Être et le néantTranslator Hazel BarnesCountry FranceLanguage FrenchSubject OntologyPublished  1943 (Gallimard, in French) 1956 (Philosophical Library, in English)Pages 638 (Routledge edition)ISBN 0-415-04029-9 (Routledge edition)Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology (French: L'Être et le néant : Essai d'ontologie phénoménologique), sometimes subtitled A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology, is a 1943 book by philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.[1] Sartre's main purpose is to assert the individual's existence as prior to the individual's essence ("existence precedes essence"). His overriding concern in writing the book was to demonstrate that free will exists.[2]While a prisoner of war in 1940 and 1941, Sartre read Martin Heidegger's Being and Time, an ontological investigation through the lens and method of Husserlian phenomenology (Edmund Husserl was Heidegger's teacher). Reading Being and Timeinitiated Sartre's own philosophical enquiry.Though influenced by Heidegger, Sartre was profoundly sceptical of any measure by which humanity could achieve a kind of personal state of fulfilment comparable to the hypothetical Heideggerian re-encounter with Being. In Sartre's account, man is a creature haunted by a vision of "completion", what Sartre calls the ens causa sui, literally "a being that causes itself", which many religions and philosophers identify as God. Born into the material reality of one's body, in a material universe, one finds oneself inserted into being. Consciousness has the ability to conceptualize possibilities, and to make them appear, or to annihilate them.Contents[hide]  1Summaryo 1.1Part 1, Chapter 1: The origin of negationo 1.2Part 1, Chapter 2: Bad faitho 1.3Part 3, Chapter 1: The look 1.3.1Being for Others 1.3.2Sex 1.3.3Nothingness 1.3.4Phenomenological ontologyo 1.4Critique of Freud 2Influence and reception 3Special terminology used by Sartre 4See also 5References 6External linksSummary[edit]In the introduction, Sartre sketches his own theory of consciousness, being, and phenomena through criticism of both earlier phenomenologists (most notably Husserl and Heidegger) as well as idealists, rationalists, and empiricists. According to him, one of the major achievements of modern philosophy is phenomenology because it disproved the kinds of dualism that set the existent up as having a "hidden" nature (such asImmanuel Kant's noumenon); Phenomenology has removed "the illusion of worlds behind the scene".[3]Based on an examination of the nature of phenomena, he describes the nature of two types of being, being-in-itself and being-for-itself. While being-in-itself is something that can only be approximated by human being, being-for-itself is the being of consciousness.Part 1, Chapter 1: The origin of negation[edit]When we go about the world, we have expectations which are often not fulfilled. For example, Pierre is not at the café where we thought we would meet him, so there is a negation, a void, a nothingness, in the place of Pierre. When looking for Pierre his lack of being there becomes a negation; everything he sees as he searches the people and objects about him are "not Pierre".[4] So Sartre claims, "It is evident that non-being always appears within the limits of a human expectation."[5]Part 1, Chapter 2: Bad faith[edit]Bad faith (or "self-deception") can be understood as the guise of existing as a character, individual, or person who defines himself through the social categorization of his formal identity. This essentially means that in being a waiter, grocer, etc., one must believe that their social role is equivalent to their human existence. Living a life defined by one's occupation, social, racial, or economic class, is the very essence of "bad faith", the condition in which people cannot transcend their situations in order to realize what they must be (human) and what they are not (waiter, grocer, etc.). It is also essential for an existent to understand that negation allows the self to enter what Sartre calls the "great human stream". The great human stream arises from a singular realization that nothingness is a state of mind in which we can become anything, in reference to our situation, that we desire.The difference between existence and identity projection remains at the heart of human subjects who are swept up by their own condition, their "bad faith". An example of projection that Sartre uses is the café waiter who performs the duties, traditions, functions, and expectations of a café waiter:[W]hat are we then if we have the constant obligation to make ourselves what we are if our mode of being is having the obligation to be what we are? Let us consider this waiter in the café. His movement is quick and forward, a little too precise, a little too rapid. He bends。